to the mere outward loveliness of hue and feature and moulding. She sat quite still, watching with enchantment what was to her an entirely new scene. It was her first entertainment of the kind; and she enjoyed it with a zest only known in such long-deferred pleasures. Luise was jumping up and sitting down twenty times in five minutes, teasing her father to know how Max would ‘do,’ and if he was nervous—if it would be better for her not to look at him too hard, at which Avice suppressed a smile, and Wilhelmi, with his rollicking Jovine laugh, cried: ‘Look at him as hard as you can stare, little simpleton. Do you think he will turn his head to look at you? It would ruin the whole artistic effect of the picture, and to-night it is Art who will be paramount before even you.’ At which she pouted, and the orchestra suddenly struck up most eloquent music; delicious to hear, and unseen singers accompanied them. It was a portion of Liszt’s _Entfesselter Prometheus_ that they played and sang, a chorus of grape-gatherers, and the melody was exquisitely sweet, and was dying gently away as the curtain rose upon a magic scene—a ‘midday rest in the grape-harvest.’ The picture thus copied was a celebrated one. A background of vine-covered, autumn-tinted Italian hills, and in the foreground a richly picturesque group of men and maidens, women and children, in every attitude of beauty and grace that could be imagined. In the very centre stood a splendidly handsome woman, dark, tall, and amply formed, in an Italian peasant’s dress; her arms were thrown upwards as she shook a tambourine and looked behind her to a youth who raised a spray of deeply tinted vine-leaves to bind them in her abundant strong black hair. The others were variously occupied; some in watching this principal couple and in jesting aside about them. One child was industriously devouring grapes; two lads were half wrestling with one another; a couple of girls were whispering with their lovers. The music still played soft strains, and the _Chor der Winzner_ died into silence, while every figure stood out with a mellow distinctness, breathing and living, yet still—still and motionless, as the painted figures on the canvas themselves. Twice the beautiful picture was shown, amidst applause and delight. Then ensued the first interval, during which comments were freely exchanged, and much laughter and gossip about the various performers went on. ‘It must be fearfully difficult,’ remarked Avice, in an almost awestruck tone. ‘How could she go on holding the tambourine for so long without its making even one tiny tinkle?’ ‘Wait till the next,’ said Wilhelmi, who appeared to have pinned his hopes on the _Hermannsschlacht_ picture. ‘Luise, pray that thy Max may not lose his heart to the Princess of Germania.’ Luise laughed a heart-whole laugh. The frantic devotion of her huge lover to his tyrannical little bride was too well-known for her to feel any qualms of jealousy.